"Let's roll" seems to be the slogan of the day, implying action with purpose behind it, and understandably so. If ever there was a time for inspiring words, it is now, with memories of harm still fresh and talk of harm's way everywhere.

But what about ordinary life? Apparently it requires its slogans, too, as we are reminded by countless motivational speakers and writers, who see us doing daily battle with our lesser selves. Thus Tony Robbins asks "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" and seeks to install in us the "personal power" to answer. And Deepak Chopra offers "a higher dimension of consciousness."

But these are milquetoast motivators -- banal, vacuous -- whose moment ended with Sept. 11. Luckily, they are not the only ones we may turn to. There is a tradition of inspirational rhetoric and instruction, reaching back before TV infomercials and the vogue for mystical cliches from the East.

There is, for instance, "The Go-Getter" (1921), a classic piece of motivational fiction written by Peter B. Kyne. The book tells the story of a crippled Army veteran who parlays a "never say die" spirit into a successful career as a lumber salesman. It seemed to answer a need in the culture after World War I, offering a bracing, no-nonsense kind of motivation. A lippy youth in the book is not given a chance to catalog his grievances but is silenced with, "Stow your sarcasm, young feller!" Times Books will reissue "The Go-Getter" next year, when the culture may have a need of its own to be answered.

And last month W. Clement Stone died, his obituaries reminding us of an earlier motivational moment. A man of limited education, Stone began as a door- to-door salesman and ended up an insurance tycoon. His death marked the end of an era, one that understood the art of motivation as cheerful edification and a goad to hard work rather than esteem-building entertainment. Stone loathed inertia and urged a "positive mental attitude." He began his day with the mantra, "I feel happy! I feel healthy! I feel terrific!" And apparently he did, until recently.

Latter-day motivators, like Stone and Kyne, encouraged self-reflection, a critical look at one's character -- or soul. At the least they encouraged their followers to stop complaining and start improving themselves. The first "motivators," in this sense, were the tent revivalists. Their testimonial-gathering and theatricality endure in the preacherly displays of our own day, but their immediate heirs were the religious motivators of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who inspired with story-telling and Scripture.

In 1896, Charles M. Sheldon, a preacher from Topeka, Kan., wrote what would become one of the best-selling pieces of inspirational fiction ever. "In His Steps" sold more than 30 million copies world-wide, and its simple question, "What would Jesus do?" encouraged Americans to pledge themselves to think before they acted -- that is, to think morally instead of selfishly.

Characters in Sheldon's novel who fail to keep the pledge, like slumlord Clarence Penrose, experience near-existential levels of anxiety about their conduct. Their agitations are alleviated only by well-timed visits from the Holy Spirit, which, in the case of Penrose, leads to a breakdown in front of his bishop and a vow to refurbish his tenement properties.

Sheldon's contemporary, the Rev. Russell Conwell of Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia, offered religious motivation tinged with mammon. He became famous for the "Acres of Diamonds" sermon: "I say you ought to be rich; you have no right to be poor." His message linked godliness to material success. The prosperous decades before the Depression were not a bad time to do so.

These motivators treated their inspiration-efforts as an avocation. Sheldon and Conwell were ministers, Stone an insurance man. Dale Carnegie, whose "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (1936) is still in print, started out as a salesman for Armour and Co. All maintained the half-fiction that they were ordinary people who had found a formula worth sharing.

No one would call today's celebrity motivators everymen. They oversee multimedia empires and tour the globe like rock stars. On his Web site, Mr. Robbins, whose glittering incisors and towering physique contribute to his larger-than-life aura, tells us his height, weight and favorite foods (Caesar salad and mashed yams) but gives us nothing about his intellectual roots. Listening to him, one finds it hard to believe he has any.

Mr. Chopra is more forthcoming, noting that it was his unsatisfying experience as a physician that led him to become the "poet-prophet of alternative medicine." Still, Messrs. Robbins and Chopra are media giants. Their audiences aren't meant to identify with their lives; they are meant to marvel at their glamour and superhuman enthusiasm.

Their words are rarely anything to marvel at. In the 1910s, the baseball-player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday, a prohibitionist, told audiences that he had advised his wife: "When I am dead, send for the butcher and skin me, and have my hide tanned and made into drum heads, and hire men to go up and down the land and beat the drums and say, 'My husband, Bill Sunday, still lives and gives the whiskey gang a run for its money."'

"Focus is power," Tony Robbins says.

It was Norman Vincent Peale who first leached the sting from the motivational message. In "The Power of Positive Thinking" (1952), and in a weekly radio program called "The Art of Living," Peale jettisoned fire-and-brimstone in favor of Christian self-esteem. In this he was helped by Smiley Blanton, an aptly named psychiatrist. The two launched a counseling service out of Peale's New York church and were soon exhorting Americans to "practice hope. As hopefulness becomes a habit, you can achieve a permanently happy spirit."

Today, such treacle is ubiquitous, part of the vast culture of therapy. The dulcet tones of Mr. Chopra have replaced the sweaty fulminations of Billy Sunday, and commodity-branding is the order of the day. Mr. Chopra hawks cookbooks, spa services and his latest CD, "a musical and spiritual journey blending modern trip-hop grooves and mystical verses inspired by ancient poetry."

But therapy can have an edge, too, as Dr. Laura once proved. These days, the "hot" counselor is Dr. Phil, now with his own TV show. He is easily mocked -- his origins on "Oprah" don't help -- but he is not entirely risible. He does seem to challenge the bromides of the modern therapeutic state, and he has no patience excuse-making -- e.g, he attacked the lawyer of a client suing a fast- food chain for making his daughter obese.

Indeed, there is in Dr. Phil's stern advice echoes of the strict, finger- wagging tone favored by motivators of old. You can almost imagine him confronting a sultry teen with "Stow your sarcasm!" Not a bad message for all of us.